AN IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS OF STANLEY KUBRICK'S FILM THE SHINING - 4 p.m.

Go to Table of Contents of the analysis (which has also a statement on purpose and manner of analysis and a disclaimer as to caveat emptor and my knowing anything authoritatively, which I do not, but I do try to not know earnestly, with some discretion, and considerable thought).

The most important thing which must be kept in mind with Kubrick's films is there is the surface or principle story and then the internal or sub-story. In many of his films, if we're really paying attention, set elements pretty much immediately destroy the surface naturalism. One may not notice this destruction the first, second or third time one watches the film. Through constructive disorientation and disconnectedness, and sleight of hand as to where our eye focuses, Kubrick, the magician, intentionally obfuscates these elements that destroy the overt and naturalistic story line. The surface story lines are the principle ones, and this is maintained and supported by the intentional obfuscation of the deconstructive elements which keep them sub rosa. At the same time, these deconstructive elements are plainly there, alongside his tremendous effort to make things look real and believable, and once we bypass the disorientation and his purposeful refocusing they become a puzzle, annihilating the sense of reality. This destruction of the film's naturalistic story line is difficult enough to conceive of and accept that most people stop at this point and decide these puzzling aspects of Kubrick's films are errors when they are not. They are part of the art of a director cleverly designing the overt story line to be unimpeded by an internal story that tears it apart. Indeed, the sub rosa elements of the internal story may be discreet but they are enough in evidence to complicate the surface story with an aura of attractive, indefinable mystery, which is one of the reasons viewers return to Kubrick again and again. To work with the "reason" and "why of the internal story line is to try to settle into Kubrick's sensibility, examining how these internal stories form a dialogue in his oeuvre with repeating themes and ideas, elaborated upon from film to film. The internal stories haven't a "plot"; they aren't that kind of story. Instead, you have to be willing to deal with comprehending the themes and ideas represented in them as instead ultimately forming a different terrain for the setting of the surface story, guiding and interacting with the overt story and giving it a new form.

SUBHEADERS FOR THIS SECTION:

JACK RELEASED FROM THE STORY ROOM - THE DOUBLE LOCK AND THE BLENDING OF C1 and C2

DICK IN THE SNOWCAT- THE GREEN MAN

REDRUM

JACK ATTACKS - KUBRICK COMMENTS ON JACK's BLOOD MARKING THE DOOR WITH PENDERECK's PASSOVER CANON - IMPLICATIONS OF RESURRECTION CONFERRED BY THE MUSIC

DICK REACHES THE HOTEL - SNOWCAT BEFORE THE PYRAMID OF SNOW - THE CABINET IN WHICH DANNY HIDES - CHANGE OF ORIENTATAION OF THE KITCHEN TO THE HOTEL'S LAYOUT - THE MURDER OF DICK - THE PROBLEM OF THE PILLAR

THE BEAST AND A PRIME REASON WHY IT IS SO DISTURBING

JACK PURSUES DANNY INTO THE MAZE, THE ENTRANCE OF WHICH HAS SHIFTED

GREAT PARTY, ISN'T IT - THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE AS THE GREAT DIVIDE AS THE GREAT PARTY

4 P.M. - Into the maze

JACK RELEASED FROM THE "STORY" ROOM - THE DOUBLE LOCK AND THE BLENDING OF C1 AND C2

508 Title card 4 pm(1:54:19)

509 LS exterior Overlook(1:54:22)

The exterior of the lodge again, immersed in darkness. We are deep in the watery blue gloom of winter. The image is the same as opened the Wednesday section, only further removed. The same four lights shine in the left and right wings of the lodge as in the opening, establishing shot on Wednesday. Indeed, there is almost nothing to tell the difference between the two but we view at a greater distance and there is a slight vignette around the periphery.

Figure 1 - 4 p.m.

510 MS Jack zooming out(1:54:27)

Cut to the storeroom in which Jack is asleep on bags of Holly Salt. The red leaf design of the Holly salt is paired with a blue leaf design on a box to the right. A jar of peanut putter is open beside him, peanuts, Oreos. A box of Rice Krispies lies nearby that had fallen when he'd earlier limped to the door to talk to Wendy. We hear the howling wind.

There are four knocks on the storeroom door. After a few moments, Jack stirs. There are four more knocks. He sits up, hand on his hurting head.

JACK: Wendy?

VOICE OUTSIDE DOOR: It's Grady, Mr. Torrance. Delbert Grady.

JACK: Grady?

Jack feels his injured ankle then pulls himself up and struggles limping to the door.

Fig. 2 - Jack rises from his bed of salt.

To the right of the door we see "No Smoking" on the wall. The Calumet tins of baking powder aren't in sight in this shot.

Fig. 3 - No smoking. No Calumet.

JACK: Ah, Grady. Grady, I, uh...hello, Grady.

GRADY: Mr. Torrance, I see you can hardly have taken care of the...

511 MCU Jack from right(1:54:27) Cut to Jack from the side, the right, bracing himself on the door.

GRADY: ...business we discussed.

JACK: No need to rub it in Mr. Grady. I'll deal with that situation as soon as I get out of here.

As Jack stands back from the door, the camera following, we see canisters of the Calumet baking powder behind him.

Fig. 4 - Jack standing before where the door for C2 is out in the hall, unseen on the interior

GRADY: Will you indeed, Mr. Torrance. I wonder. I have my doubts. I, and others, have come to believe that your heart is not in this. That you haven't the belly for it.

JACK (laughs): Just give me one more chance to prove it, Mr. Grady. It's all I ask.

GRADY: Your wife appears to be stronger than we imagined, Mr. Torrance. Somewhat more...resourceful. She seems to have got the better of you.

JACK: For the moment, Mr. Grady. Only for the moment.

GRADY: I fear you will have to deal with the matter in the harshest possible way, Mr. Torrance. I fear...that is the only thing to do.

There is a long moment of silence, the wind howling, then we hear the locks being undone without. Jack smiles.

The camera shows behind Jack the area where the door to the C2 storage room should be in accordance with it being seen in an exterior shot around the corner from the C1 door. But when we saw the C2 storage room door, it was connected with one of those right angle mysterious turns that occurs with a disappearance, such as the C2 room not being possible when we rounded the corner and saw the C1 door. The C2 door may not be there on the interior, but due the existence of the C2 door in the exterior shot, we have, in essence, two rooms suggested as being here, which may have something to do with the two locks on the C1 door whereas the other locker doors have only one each and a padlock.

I don't mean that the C2 door is to be taken as a door to the C1 storage room. Instead, this is a space in which two separate rooms occupy one space.

Much is made of how Jack gets out of the "story" room, C1, as if it can be shown that Wendy didn't properly lock the door and this lapse is sufficient to explain away every weird event in the film. As if the impossible window is any less problematic if we find that Wendy didn't properly lock the C1 door. As if all the impossibilities (and there are many, as the whole place is an impossibility) would be less problematic. The hotel is a hotbed of anomalies that demonstrate that there can be no expectation of absolutely rational answers in the film, not when the Torrances arrived with a comical amount of luggage that in no way would have fit into their small VW. The manner in which Kubrick focuses in on the double locks, as Wendy first opens the C1 door, then closes Jack in, gives the impetus for people to look for a rational reason for Jack escaping. Kubrick makes it reasonable for people to assume she she didn't properly bolt the locks shut when she was having so much problem opening them. But, for me, what stands out is that this door has two locks when the other doors have one.

The problem of the unlocked door returns us also to the problem of how the door to room 237 came to be unlocked. The C1 door has two locks. Room 237 had two doors.

Concerning the emphasis on anamnesis and the choices of music used in this section having to do with Passover and Christ's Death and Resurrection, I think we need to pay attention to those and consider that the door opened mysteriously, just as in the Easter rolling the stone away from the crypt story.

But before getting into that, I'd like to spend a little time looking at this scene in respect of Jacob's ladder. When one considers the already established relationship with the story of Jacob's ladder, one may have cause to wonder if there is an association with Jack's limp. Jacob was also lamed at the end of his wrestling with an "angel" (more appropriately Esau's angel or what might be called Jacob's "evil inclination"). The laming that caused Jacob to limp comes from the word TsLH, meaning one-sided, as in the curve of a rib. Because of the laming there came a ban on eating the sciatic nerve, cutting away the veins and fat. The sciatic nerve, which isn't kosher, is called "gid hanasheh" meaning "to forget", and is symbolic for Jacob's dark side, humanity's darker side, that not ruled by reason, which was the point at which Jacob was weak and so he was struck in this place. NShH (of hanasheh) is to neglect as in the sense of failure, and is also a word for debt, to lend or borrow with interest, oblivion. The ban against eating the sciatic nerve is due it is this place, this thing, which causes one to forget reason and morality.

I explore this not only because of Kubrick's tying in the story with Jacob and Esau, but because of Jack being observed lying on bags of "Holly salt" as this scene opens, which could possibly be intended to bring to mind holy salt. Kosher salt. In the "8 am" scene where we first observed Jack standing in the "story" room, catching his ankle and falling against some boxes, showing he'd been injured, in the foreground was prominently placed a bottle of Kosher Dill Pickles.

Kosher salt is used in porging, draining the meat of blood, in order to make it kosher.

If I pursue some of these angles it's because of the choice of musical compositions and some other elements that fit with them through the course of the movie, or seem to fit to me, so allow me to run with it.

I've already gone into the connection between 42 and "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". But the English word, dull, seems much like the Hebrew, DLL, which means weakness, poverty, languishing, even something dangling (such as a hair. From this comes the name Delilah, who conquered Samson by cutting his hair, robbing him of his strength. She led him astray from his Nazarite purpose, which I suppose could be compared to Grady being concerned with Wendy and Danny leading Jack away from his near sacred devotion to the Overlook. She threatens to make him forget his responsibilities there for concern for his family.

Kubrick has used many, many well known commercial items in the storeroom, but doing a search of the internet I can find nothing for Holly Salt. Even if it was a commercial product that was eventually discontinued, the internet is pretty good about having histories and old ads for such items, and there is nothing for a brand, Holly Salt. Yet there are at least 6 very large bags of Holly Salt that Jack has made for his bed, surrounded by a wealth of known commercial products--and there are 3 more bags that appear to be Holly Salt on a low pallet beside him. We saw these bags also when Wendy was being shown the storage room by Dick, but they were placed in such a way where we couldn't observe what they were, no product or commercial name shown, and there weren't the 3 extra bags on the low pallet.

Figure 5 - The salt bags on Closing Day.

Music referring to the Passover is also used in the film, and I shall come to that again in a moment and link back again to the storerooms.

Passover, pasach, means to limp, to jump over, to be lame. There is some relationship to be drawn between this and the laming of Jacob, though he was described as lamed as in TsLH.

And now back to how Jack got out of the "story" locker. In Eyes Wide Shut Bill's mask mysteriously disappears from his Rainbow bag and then finds its way onto his pillow at the end of the film. I have written about this in my analysis on the film and shown how in the context of the visual sensibility of the film Bill had himself placed the mask on his pillow. When he puts it in the credenza, Kubrick crossfades to the bedroom and we see, in effect, Bill putting the mask on his bed. We have something of the same happening here with the blending of the C2 and C1 rooms.

When, on Closing Day, Stuart and Bill lead Jack an Wendy to the boiler room, we have a crossfade from the kitchen to the hall behind the office. Note to the right how the door to the "story" room, the C-1 locker, briefly fits right over a metal storage unit before which a worker is laboring.

Fig. 50 - Crossfade from the kitchen to the service hall behind the office.

In some later shots of the hall, one of the doors of the storage unit before which the man is standing is open. This storage unit is a duplicate of another storage unit further down in which Danny will hide when Jack is on his murderous rampage, its door open in that section rather than the one of this storage unit.

Fig. 51 - Stuart leads the Torrances through the service hall behind the office, on the way from the kitchen to the basement.

This storage unit is directly opposite a time clock.

On Closing Day, Jack shows Wendy into the C-4 locker, then we have the skip to his showing her into the C-3 meat locker and we see beyond it the timeclock for the kitchen employees. One should perhaps look at that timeclock as commenting on both and scenes and the "flip" which happens so that Dick shows Wendy an opposing locker.

When the Torrances and Bill and Ullman are going down the hall behind the office on Closing Day, that employee who is standing before the locker in the crossfade turns and crosses the hall and enters Ullman's office door. Kubrick makes a point of showing Ullman turning to look at him as he enters that office door. An entirely innocent crossing but I think it somewhat speaks to Jack's ability to exit the "story" room door. And it concerns the crossfade which links the storage room to that storage unit in the other hall, the one from which the employee turned to open the office door, the one which is later shown with one of its doors open. The storage units are so alike it would be easy to confuse one for the other.

To understand what I'm getting at you'd probably need to read the post on The Internal Logic for the Discovery of the Mask on the Pillow (in Eyes Wide Shut). I have even wondered if the manner in which Kubrick used the cupboard, the mask entering it then appearing on the pillow, and how this is based on a visual logic in the film, was partly an exposition on the metal cupboards in The Shining and how Jack got out of the "story" room. The mask, put in the cupboard, disappears then reappears in what seems a completely different place, but the pillow on the bed has been visually connected with the cabinet. The open door of one of the storage cabinet doors in the hall behind the office, is replaced by the open storage cabinet door of the other cabinet. They are the same but different. Dick begins to show Wendy and Danny into the C-4 lockere, but instead they enter the C-3 locker. The C-2 exterior door is observed but the C-2 room is replaced by the C-1 room and made impossible. But it is there for a purpose. Jack, locked in the C-1 room, may find his way out of the C-1 room because the C-2 room overlays it, it inhabits the same space, not literally, but in the same way that the Greenwich streets Bill navigates in Eyes Wide Shut are all the same streets but with different facades that don't even completely hide their other life. The repeating pieces of a maze, different parts of which look so familiar as to be nearly identical, but aren't, and places that look very different but turn out to be connected.

DICK IN THE SNOWCAT - THE GREENMAN

512 LS Snowcat(1:57:43)

Cut to Dick driving the Snowcat toward the lodge in a curiously peaceful view in which we see no snow falling. Red lights blink alternatively on the left and right side of the vehicle. As the Snowcat nears, it could be said to have an animal-like face.

The scene is so pristine, reminiscent of the clean lines of the maze, and with the manner of its layout, one has the feeling of the Snowcat itself making its way through a maze.

A crossfade from the Snowcat to Dick shows Dick as an anthropomorphized tree, a kind of Green Man.

Figure 7 - Dick as the Green Man.

The most notable instance of something similar was the anthropomorphized plant in the Wednesday sequence in which we had a crossfade of Jack fleeing Room 237 blending him with a plant in Dick's Miami home.

Perhaps Kubrick wanted to have a balance to Jack polymorphing into a plant in Miami, so we now have Dick as the Green Man.

A fairly quick crossfade to the path through the forest seen from behind Dick, Dick appearing as a silhouette.

REDRUM

515 MCU Danny in Suite 3 bedroom(1:58:39)

Cut to Danny in the suite 3 bedroom, seen beside the vanity, a picture of a snowbound landscape behind him. He is dressed in a sweater and plaid shirt in brown and rust tones. He advances forward. We clearly see behind him the television and the window, its drapes shut, which is also an impossible window, this being an interior apartment.

DANNY: Redrum. Redrum. Redrum. Redrum. Redrum. Redrum.

The television in suite 3.

The television is the same model as the ones in Boulder and Miami.

Dick watching Miami's Channel 10 news.

The television in Boulder.

Danny pauses beside the bed, looking down on his mother, who is sleeping, and picks up from the nightstand the knife she had gotten from the kitchen.

We see the lamp on the bedside table now has a wood base, matching a lamp with the wood base that was on the vanity. Beside it we see a toy green army tank.

Cut to Danny standing before the bathroom door, Wendy seen beyond him sleeping. He begins to write with the lipstick. This is a moment he had foreseen and now it is being fulfilled.

DANNY (as he writes the R): Redrum. Redrum. (As he writes the E.) Redrum. Redrum. (As he writes the backwards D.) Redrum. (He writes the backward R. First he makes a small D and then adds its legs, forming an R.) Redrum. (As he writes the U.) Redrum. (As he writes the M.) Redrum. (A pause.) Redrum. Redrum. (He turns to Wendy and his voice rises.) Redrum. Redrum. Redrum.

Note that Danny writes the center R first as a D, then adds the legs, making it an R. The center R and D are backward, whereas the M and U can be read left to right or right to left as they're symmetrical. The R and D remind me of Wendy's yellow jacket in the Saturday section with the two cactus on the front pockets which looked like 4's, and I had wondered if these could represent D's (daleth, door). Then when she turned we saw a cactus on the back of her jacket that was then reversed...and had a person taking a siesta against it. In the next section Wendy was wearing the same jacket and was lying down. Here, Wendy is sleeping. These are the only times we see her resting/sleeping.

Figure 9 - Danny goes to Wendy.

Wendy starts up.

517 MS Wendy seen from the rear of Danny. (2:00:49)

Danny begins saying "redrum" now in his normal voice, coming out of his Tony trance, Wendy shocked to see him facing her with the knife in hand.

WENDY: AH!!

DANNY: Redrum! Redrum!

WENDY: Danny!

DANNY: Redrum!

WENDY: Danny! (She grabs the knife from him.)

DANNY: Redrum!

WENDY: Danny, stop it!

DANNY: Redrum! Redrum!

WENDY: Danny!

DANNY: Redrum!

At 2:00:57 the camera does a quick zoom in on Wendy screaming as she looks at it.

518 MS The bathroom door in the vanity mirror. (2:00:58)

A shot of REDRUM on the bathroom door in the vanity mirror. This is what Wendy had screamed at, reading the word in the mirror as MURDER. The camera does a quick zoom in on the word..

Figure 10 - Wendy sees MURDER.

The reflection of the door in the mirror is slightly different than when the door is seen not in the mirror. There's something on the middle panel above the word murder.

It's interesting that in Danny's vision (less precognitive than one he made manifest, as he saw the word then later writes it) the door was shot from below at an extreme angle such as with the 2001 monolith. Much the same angle was used for Wendy when looking at Jack's papers, then with Jack in the story room at its locked door.

Figure 10b.

Figure 10c.

Figure 10d.

We also had an extreme low angle shot is that of Jack after he's been injured and is locked in the storage room.

Figure 10e.

All of these extreme low angle shots seem to be related to Jack's mysterious movements around the lodge.
When Wendy had been seen at this extreme angle from below the typewriter, Jack had seemingly materialized out of the shadows as she read the repeating phrase on his papers. When Jack had been seen at this extreme angle in the storage room, he had been conversing with Grady and then was mysteriously released from the locked room. With the vision of the door seen at this extreme angle we had precognitively seen a word that Danny would later write. After this event is realized, Jack suddenly appears, having escaped the storage room.

I should note that it appears Wendy may be wearing Jack's blue robe from the Monday section in which Danny went to the suite to get his fire truck and found Jack sitting on the edge of the bed rather than asleep.

JACK ATTACKS - KUBRICK COMMENTS ON JACK'S BLOOD MARKING THE DOOR WITH PENDERECKI'S PASSOVER CANON - IMPLICATIONS OF RESURRECTION CONFERRED BY THE MUSIC

519 MS Wendy and Danny. (2:01:02)

BOOM! Wendy, Danny in her arms, looks to her right (our left) as we hear Jack attack the apartment door.

520 MS Jack axing the door. (2:01:04)

Cut to Jack heaving an axe into the door. Once. Twice.

521 MS Wendy and Danny. (2:01:08)

Wendy lifts Danny in her arms and glances in a panic around the room.

522 MS Jack axing the door. (2:01:11)

Jack slams the axe into the door again. And again.

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520

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522

523 MS Wendy and Danny. (2:01:13)

Wendy glances to the bathroom door and back at the hall. We hear the axe fall again. And again. She goes to open the bathroom door. Again we hear the axe fall as she enters the bathroom with Danny.

Figure 11 - Wendy hides with Danny in the bathroom.

524 MS Wendy and Danny inside the bathroom. (2:01:21)

Wendy has put Danny down and he clings to her as she bolts the bathroom door and locks it. We hear the axe again.

525 MS Jack axing the door. (2:23:37)

Jack slices open the door with the axe.

526 MS Wendy and Danny inside the bathroom. (2:01:27)

We see the bathroom door in the vanity mirror in the bathroom, Wendy tossing the knife into the sink. We hear the axe again as she rushes to the toilet and pushes off of it all the cleaning supplies and toiletries. We hear the axe as she opens the bathroom window.

527 MS Wendy from outside the window. (2:01:32)

We hear the axe again as we see, from outside, Wendy forcing up the windowpane.

528 MCU Danny. (2:01:35)

Cut to Danny facing the door in terror, clinging to his mother, as he hears again the axe.

529 MS Jack axing the door. (2:01:37)

Cut to Jack again axing the door.

530 MS The bathroom window, exterior. (2:01:38)

Cut to Wendy struggling to get out the bathroom window. We hear the axe.

531 LS The bathroom window, exterior. (2:01:41)

Cut to a long shot of the bathroom window which shows us for the first time the relationship of suite 3 to the lodge and how, with the exception of the bathroom window, the rest of its windows are impossible, for the room is in the center of the lodge and as an interior room it can only have one wall that avails it of window light.

Wendy tries to get out the window but she is too large. She pulls back in.

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531

532 MS Jack axing the door. (2:01:44)

Jack again heaves the axe.

Figure 12 - Jack axes the door.

533 MS The door from inside the apartment. (2:01:46)

We see the axe successfully take out a chunk of door. Jack peers through the hole.

534 MCU Jack through the door. (2:01:51)

JACK: Wendy, I'm home!

He reaches in and turns the green key.

535 MS Wendy and Danny. (2:01:57)

Wendy lifts Danny to the window.

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536 LS Bathroom window exterior. (2:02:00)

His feet pushed through first, we watch as Danny successfully emerges and slides down the pyramid of snow. One can see in Figure 13 how the bathroom window facing south makes all the other windows of the apartment impossible as they are interior windows and would be on the west. This is the first time we are given an orientation of the apartment relative to the rest of the building, and thus the first time we have any idea that only the bathroom window is legitimate. But then Kubrick has also downplayed the other windows in the apartment. When we have seen daylight in the room, we have never seen it coming from the other windows themselves, only the bathroom window. We have only seen the other windows when they are draped.

Figure 13 - Danny slides down the pyramid of snow.

537 MS Bathroom window exterior. (2:02:11)

Wendy again struggles to get through but is unable. We see in the left hand corner the bathroom curtain billowing wildly, as if a great deal of wind is entering the room through the window.

538 MS Jack mounting stairs. (2:02:16)

Cut to Jack, having entered the suite, mounting the apartment's inner stairs.

539 MS Bathroom window exterior. (2:02:23)

Wendy still struggles to get out the window. Giving up, she retreats back into the bathroom.

540 MS Danny outside lodge. (2:02:27)

Freezing in the wind, Danny watches the bathroom window, waiting for his mother.

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541 MS Jack from rear. (2:02:29)

Cut to shot of Jack from the rear as he advances toward the bedroom.

JACK: Come out, come out, wherever you are.

Figure 14 - Jack enters the bedroom.

From this perspective we don't see the flowers that should be on the vanity, which we saw when Danny took the lipstick from the vanity, which we saw when Wendy viewed the word MURDER in the vanity mirror. They were also unobserved from this perspective (Danny's) in the Monday section when he entered the suite and saw Jack sitting on the side of the bed. The flowers were also there in the Wednesday scenes that took place in this room.

542 MS Wendy. (2:02:35)

Wendy struggles with pushing up the window pane, the camera's angle now from inside the bathtub, watching from beyond the shower curtain. Again, she tries to climb out.

543 MS Bathroom window exterior. (2:02:39)

Cut to Wendy unsuccessfully trying to get out the window.

544 MCU Jack at bathroom door. (2:02:42)

Cut to Jack approaching the bathroom door, a picture of a snowy house or barn beyond him on the wall. He tries the door and finds it locked. Smiling, he knocks.

545 MS Bathroom window exterior. (2:02:56)

Wendy is still only halfway out the window.

WENDY: Danny, I can't get out!

546 LS Danny before the lodge. (2:03:00)

Cut to Danny standing at the foot of the pyramid of snow looking up at his mother.

WENDY: Run! Run and hide! Run! Quick!

Danny turns and runs away from the window, as if toward the unseen maze.

547 MCU Jack before door. (2:03:09)

JACK: Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in.

548 MCU Wendy in the bathroom. (2:03:15) Wendy grabs the knife from the sink. We've a brief view of the bathtub as she goes to stand to the inner right of the door, terrified.

549 MCU Jack before door. (2:03:20)

JACK: Not by the hair on your chinny-chin-chin? Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll...

Cut to a shot of Jack's hand, the knife slashing from left to right off it, splashing blood on the door, the cut hand withdrawing through the door.

Figure 15 - Jack's hand sliced.

561 MCU Jack through door. (2:04:25) Jack screams and turns from the door.

Jack's blood marks the bathroom door. On the other side of the door, in this area, is where Danny had written "redrum" in red lipstick. If we had x-ray vision and could see through this door, we'd see the word "murder". And this seems very important to me, that Kubrick has chosen to have Jack's blood splashed on the opposite side of the door from MURDER/REDRUM.

Both the cutting and the reversal can be compared to the scene in A Clockwork Orange when Alex cuts Dim's hand, receiving inspiration from music he'd heard wafting through a window.

The name Dim is from Burgess' book but it also carries an important connection to Lolita.
When Lolita had appeared in Humbert's room with his breakfast tray, surprising him as he wrote in his secret diary, Humbert attempted to divert her attention from the journal by reading her words from "the divine Edgar", as in Allen Poe.

Notice how he emphasizes this word. "It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, in the misty mid region of Weir." You see, he takes a word like "dim" in one line and twists it? And it comes back as "mid region of Weir".

We can apply this to Kubrick's flip horizontals, his reversals. And with MURDER/REDRUM we've another here, this one echoed by the blood smeared on the other side of the door.

As Jack axed the door, Penderecki's "Kanon Paschy" played, which is concerned with the entombment and resurrection of Christ and is the Passover Canon, Christ serving as the Passover lamb whose blood marked on doors prevented the Destroyer from entering those homes consecrated with the blood, the Destroyer going on to take the lives of the firstborn of the Egyptians and any with unmarked doors.

When Dick had taken Wendy and Danny into freezer C4, he had listed off all the meat contained therein then had asked Danny if he liked lamb, whereupon they exited out of freezer C3 on the other side of the hall. With Jack's mysterious release from the virtual prison of the "story" room and then his axing through a door while the Passover Canon plays, it might do well to consider the idea of entombment and resurrection as signified by the music.

I had already noted the possibility of a Passover theme earlier when Jack was locked in the storage room.
The Passover marking of the door was on the lintel and the two doorposts. Which draws us now to think about the blood red doors of the elevators. We have also seen smaller versions of these that look for all the world to again be elevators, but it is only after the marking of this door, when Wendy is fleeing in a later scene, that she finally uses one of those smaller versions and we find the red panels are not elevators at all but are as large decorative door posts (really, mock doors) to a central brown door.

Struck with the knife, Jack has withdrawn his hand howling, wounded. Though it's a relatively minor wound, Wendy is saved, for Dick now arrives on the scene.

In A Clockwork Orange, after Dim is cut, Alex is taken by his droogs to the cat woman's house. It is a set up, for after he mortally injures the cat woman, the droogs assault him on the doorstep between two sphinx statues (another hybrid animal, of feline and woman) and leave him for the police. Dick's death, he having arrived in the snow cat, thus echoes the death of the cat woman.

DICK REACHES THE THE HOTEL - SNOWCAT BEFORE THE PYRAMID OF SNOW - THE CABINET IN WHICH DANNY HIDES - CHANGE OF ORIENTATION OF KITCHEN TO HOTEL'S LAYOUT - THE MURDER OF DICK

562 MCU View from Snowcat. (2:04:28)

Cut to a view from the Snowcat from behind Dick, it snowing heavily again now. We see old timbers without limbs or foliage that mimic the axed fragments of the panel of the door. A light rises above the horizon. Another two lights to the right of that. We see to the left the tall central pyramidal roof tower of the Overlook, the Snowcat quickly closing in on it.

Figure 16 - Dick sees the Overlook.

563 MCU Wendy. (2:04:46)

Wendy stands, gasping, by the door. Hearing the Snowcat, she looks toward the window.

564 MCU Jack from rear. (2:04:53)

Cut to Jack outside the bathroom door, also hearing the Snowcat. He stands back from the door.

565 LS Snowcat, lodge exterior.(2:05:03)

Cut to the Snowcat descending the hill beside the pipes and driving past the garage.

566 MCU Jack from rear. (2:05:13)

Listening to the Snowcat, Jack faces the bathroom door again.

567 MCU Wendy. (2:05:20)

Wendy glances from the bathroom window to the door.

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568 LS Snowcat, lodge exterior.(2:05:24)

The Snowcat rolls to a stop at the base of the pyramid of snow outside the lit bathroom window. The engine cuts off.

Figure 17 - The Snowcat parks before the pyramid of snow.

I remember the first time I saw The Shining and saw in the snowbank, down which Danny slides, a pyramid, and in the Snowcat the sphinx. My intuition is confirmed by the comparison I've just made between events here and in A Clockwork Orange Dim's hand is cut by Alex; Alex is taken by his droogs to the Cat Woman's house, where he mortally injures her. When Alex exits onto her porch, which is decorated with twin sphinxes, his droogs attack him and leave him for the police. Here, Jack's hand has been wounded. Now Dick arrives in the Snow Cat and parks at the base of the pyramid. Another Snow Cat sits useless in the garage, having been disabled by Jack.

With Dick's approach of the lodge, and our view of it as the front of the Timberline, and then his coming over the hill on the left, we have also yet another confirmation that this view of the set's lodge, however different from the Timberline, serves as the front of the lodge. In the Closing Day section I have already written on this at length, why and how the front and back of the lodge are interchangeable.

569 LS Danny running down service hall.(2:05:30)

Cut to Danny running through the lobby area, past the bathrooms, into the green service hall behind the offices. We hear the wind howling. He passes the clock that appears to read about 5:20. He looks back as he reaches the door to Ullman's office. He looks to his right (our left) at the doors that would lead to the hall beyond Ullman's office, then scrambles into a waiting partially open cabinet.

Figure 8 - Danny hides in the second pairing of cabinets. Just as his mother couldn't get the window all the way open, he can't close the cabinet all the way

I have previously discussed how we have a doubling of the two cabinets in this hall. On Closing Day we don't see this cabinet door open but a door open in the corresponding cabinet of a doubled pair down the hall.

We also see the same door open of the doubled pair in the Saturday section as Danny cycles past on his way to his encounter with the girls.

Figure 9 - A corresponding cabinet of another pair was open on Tuesday but now is closed.

That corresponding cabinet door of that doubled pair, further down the hall, that was open on Closing Day and on Saturday, is closed in this scene. Instead we have this cabinet's door open. The other cabinet couldn't have been used by Danny to hide in as the open door had shown it had a shelf in it, while this cabinet does not. Another benefit of this cabinet door being open, instead of the first, is that Danny will have more time to escape from Jack when Jack enters the hall.

This cabinet, of the second pair of cabinets, doubles the other one so exactly that there even seems to be the same kind of damage on the wall to the left of the cabinet. Or is there damage on the wall? As you can see in Figure 8, the wall has the appearance of being bashed in in 3 places beside the second cabinet. If you look at Figure 9, at the corresponding cabinet in the first set, there are these marks in the same exact spot. However, they are similitudes, for if you look at the area close up you see these may not be bash marks in the wall but some kind of apparatus hidden to the side of the cabinet. This may also be the same case with the other cabinet, but if it is, the apparatus is more carefully concealed so that instead we appear to have the bash marks on the wall.

Comparing the two sets of cabinets.

This is much like the exact doubling of the silhouette of Dick in his Matador car, and the silhouette of Jack as he stepped out from behind the wall/pillar, surprising Wendy.

This adds significance to a Closing Day scene in this hall, when a man with brown-blond hair who was standing at the first set of cabinets putting up dishes then crossed over to Stuart's office door and entered it after the group had passed, Ullman glancing back at him.
What Ullman had said on Closing Day, as he glanced back at the man who was going to his room, was, "Well, the last days are very hectic (glance back). Everybody always wants to be on their way as early as possible. By 5 o'clock tonight, you'll never know anybody was ever here."

There's a kind of odd choreography going on here that links the Closing Day scene in the hall with this one, through Ullman glancing back at the man who enters his office, just as he passes the 2nd set of cabinets in which Danny will later hide, and Danny running down the same hall, seeing "the door" (as Kubrick says in the documentary) and glancing over to the cabinet, seeing its open, and deciding to hide in it. The door he sees is not the one into Ullman's office but the one that goes into the hall behind Ullman's office. And yet, through these glances, the events seem to have some correspondance. It is also after 5 o'clock.

570 MCU Danny inside the cabinet.(2:05:43)

Cut to Danny inside the cabinet.

571 MS Cabinet exterior.(2:05:46)

Danny tries to slam the door shut but it only partially closes.

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572 LS Jack in kitchen.(2:05:47)

Cut to Jack limping through the kitchen past the open door to C1. He appears to have come down the hall leading past the other storage rooms, but this doesn't make much sense as he should have turned at the corner and passed directly outside the C1 door, instead of passing behind the table. Especially as he is injured he would economize movement. Instead, it almost seems as though he has simply materialized in the middle of the kitchen. We've no idea why he would be passing through here when he was last observed in the suite. The wind howls.

Figure 10 - Jack limps through the kitchen.

573 MCU Wendy.(2:05:58)

Weeping in the corner by the bathroom door, Wendy comes to the realization that Jack has left the apartment. She tries the bathroom door and finds the lock jammed. She strikes it with her knife.

574 MS Dick exterior lodge.(2:06:22)

Cut to Dick outside the lodge. He passes two lit windows on the ground floor as he approaches the door Wendy had earlier exited to go check out the Snowcat. The door is still partially open. He enters.

Figure 11 - Dick enters the hotel through the same door Wendy had used to exit earlier.

575 MS Jack enters a hall adjoining the lobby.(2:06:41)

Jack enters a hall adjoining the lobby, which gives the impression the kitchen must be somewhere off in this direction. On Closing Day, it was instead suggested the kitchen was in proximity of the Gold Room, or at least on the other side of the lobby. In the A Month Later section, Wendy comes from the lobby's Gold Room hall on her way from the kitchen to the suite, and passes through the lobby headed in the direction of the elevators. Now, we have just been shown Jack in the kitchen, and next he is exiting a hall that is on the opposite side of the lobby from the lobby's Gold Room hall. As ever, nothing about the hotel makes sense.

Figure 12 - Jack enters the lobby from the kitchen area but is on the east side of it.

He passes the 7-Up hall, and then the parallel hall to it that runs behind the office. He glances down it as he painfully limps past. He begins to ascend the stairs at the rear of the lobby.

DICK (from off-screen): Hello! Anybody here?

Coming around a column, Jack looks down over the lobby and its dark maze. Again, we hear Dick.

DICK: Hello! Anybody here?

Figure 13 - The ashcan behind the pillar.

In figure 13, above, we see an ashcan behind the pillar in the place of which Jack will hide.

Figure 14 - Jack surveys the lobby.

576 LS Dick in Gold Hall outside lobby.(2:07:26)

Cut to Dick entering the Gold Room lobby hall, which Wendy used in the A Month Later section when she was wheeling breakfast to Jack, supposedly from the kitchen.

Figure 15 - Dick enters the hall off the lobby.

DICK: Hello! Anybody here?

When Wendy was seen coming down this hall in the A Month Later section, the camera tracked to screen left before letting us see the place where the July 4th photo will be observed at the end of the film. This time, the camera cuts a little later and we're able to see where the July 4th photo will be placed and that it isn't currently there. All the images seem the same as the day that we saw Wendy going down the hall.

Slowly, Dick advances into the lobby, calling, "Hello!" We see the green fluorescent light of the service hall behind the offices through an open door on the left, the tone of green light that we've come to associate with the eerie. He progresses toward the cashier's area, calling, "Hello! Anybody here?" He passes over the circle on which had rested Danny's Big Wheel with his Bugs Bunny in the A Month Later section when Jack had slammed his yellow ball against the diamond wall hanging and it had bounced off to the right.

Scatman's legs are bowed and this is effectively camouflaged in earlier scenes, but here that bowing almost seems exaggerated by both his boots and the camera angle. His heavy jacket makes his upper body seem overbearing in comparison to his legs. If one compares this shot of him to the earlier poster showing the supposed "skier" as minotaur a curious resemblance can be seen between that silhouette of the minotaur, with its bowed bull legs and the overbearing weight of the upper body, and Scatman's form here. Is Jack, who slowly becomes a minotaur throughout the film, who faces off with Danny in the maze, here slaying a kind of double? As we saw earlier, Jack's silhouette, as he emerged from the shadows in the Colorado room, frightening Wendy, was exactly the same as Dick's silhouette in the Matador when he was driving to get the Snowcat, perfectly mimicking it. Dick (Scatman) is certainly a protective presence in the film and so doesn't seem to fulfill the threatening minotaur archetype, but it does seem that he is here being represented as the creature as well.

Figure 16 - Ashcan moved 90 degrees.

We see the ashcan behind the last pillar has been moved 90 degrees from where we saw it in 575 when Jack was looked over the lobby from the stairs. I found this when I realized the waiter had disappeared perhaps behind a pillar at the other end of the lobby when Jack arrived for his interview and after he made a 90 degree turn to the receptionist desk. I came back to look at this pillar as well, saw the ash can there, and considered Jack couldn't possibly hide behind the pillar with the ash can there. When he looks down from the stairway we see the ashcan behind it. With his limp, Jack shouldn't have had time to duck behind the pillar and move the heavy ash can, but as we can see it has been moved 90 degrees.

A waiter is seen carrying food to a group by the door on the day of the interview. Jack stops and talks to a clerk then the camera returns to show the group. We no longer see the waiter. His absence seems to presage Jack's hiding behind the pillar in this scene, and is followed by Jack crossing over the spot where Dick is slain.

Dick reaches the point between the columns outside the office where, on The Interview day, Jack had glanced up to see the woman descending the rear steps, the older man entering the lobby from the direction where the yellow ball would disappear, and we had heard the first "sha" sound when Jack had tread upon this spot on his way to the office on the day of the interview.

Jack leaps out with a yell and slams the axe into Dick's chest.

Figure 17 - Jack surprises Dick.

577 MCU Jack.(2:08:33)

Brief shot of Jack as he plunges the axe in Dick's chest.

578 CU Axe in Dick's chest.(2:08:33)

Brief shot of the axe in Dick's chest. Dick yelling.

579 CU Danny.(2:08:34)

Brief shot of Danny screaming.

580 MCU Jack.(2:08:34)

Cut immediately to Jack with blood streaming down his cut hand, the axe in Dick's chest, forcing it deeper.

581 MCU Dick.(2:08:35)

Cut to Dick screaming.

582 CU Danny.(2:08:35)

Danny continues to scream.

583 MCU Jack.(2:08:36)

Jack continues forcing the axe into Dick's chest.

584 CU Dick.(2:08:38)

Screaming, Dick turns and falls back and down.

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585 CU Danny.(2:08:39)

Danny continues screaming and we see that this is the image of himself Tony had shown him in on the day of The Interview when he'd had his vision in the mirror.

Figure 18 - Danny's scream.

586 LS hall by elevators.(2:08:39)

Cut to the empty hall that passes by the elevators. We see the diamond rug against which Jack had bounced the ball in the A Month Later section. Danny's scream continues. As it stops, Jack rises into the frame, smiling. The music begins.

587 LS Dick dead in the circle.(2:08:50)

We see Dick lying dead in the circle before the cashier's area, Jack rising, pulling back from the body. Following Danny's scream, he quickly limps around the reception area to the service hall.

It's difficult to tell here--indeed it's staged so we can't tell it here--but the ashcan that had been moved 90 degrees is already back in its place behind the pillar.

Thus we see that a "missing" something can be a matter of a 90 degree turn having removed the object from view.

JACK: Danny! Danny boy!

Figure 19 - Jack runs toward Danny's scream.

He reaches the bathroom doors to gaze down the service hall.

JACK: Danny!

588 LS Service hall.(2:09:05)

A long shot down the empty service hall from behind Jack. Danny emerges from the cabinet door on the left and runs across the hall. Jack pursues him. The clock reads 5:25.

Figure 20 - Danny flees.

THE BEAST AND A PRIME REASON WHY IT IS SO DISTURBING

589 MS Wendy climbing staff stairs.(2:09:13)

Wendy ascends the staff stairs. If these are the same stairs as are shown outside suite 3--we have seen when Danny slid down the pyramid of snow they are on the second floor--she would have to already be up a level and ascending to a 4th floor. We see one lit lamp and two unlit bare bulbs in the ceiling. Furniture is stacked against the walls. She passes a door which is a double digit ending in 5 (perhaps 05).

Why she is climbing the stairs when the last she saw Danny was out in the snow, we don't know. Did she possibly hear him scream? If she heard him scream, there's no reason it should have sounded like it was coming from an upper floor? So we are left to wonder why she looks for Danny upstairs in the staff area.

Figure 21 - Wendy climbs the stairs.

Calling, "Danny", she continues round the stairwell past a double door and pictures of American Indian children looking on.

WENDY: Danny!

Climbing the stairs she looks around in horror as she hears what many will take for chanting as in something like a Black Mass, but the music that is being played as she subsequently witnesses the lodge's ghosts coming to life is actually part of the "Kanon Paschy/Utrenja", by Krysztof Penderecki, meaning "Morning Prayer", based on the entombment and resurrection of Christ. Music from this was also playing when Jack axed the bathroom door and Wendy sliced his hand with her knife.

Figure 22 - The pied cow painting.

The expression on Wendy's face is one of confusion as she continues up the stairs, past a moonlit painting of a pied cow, past a painting of a large house against purple mountains in a snowy landscape, to the next floor where again we see a lit lamp and then one that is unlit and lacking its shade.

The painting of the pied cow, shown above, at one point shows the reflection of the stair rail. This painting is by the same artist who did the painting of the horse racing down the railroad tracks toward a train, seen in the apartment subsequent Danny's vision, the realization of which we are now experiencing. I write on these paintings at length in this post, Stankley Kubrick, Anamnesis, and His Use of Railroad Imagery. The subject is too involved to get into here, for which reason it has its own post, but the reflection of the bannister on this particular painting recalls the railroad track of the painting and would be a replay of it, though flipped horizontally. In the other painting the horse had been charging down the track toward the train. Kubrick in A Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut made elaborate but hidden use of railroad imagery to express anamnesis, a meeting of past and present through events recurring though with slight differences.

Colville's "Horse and Train" in the Boulder apartment.

The Alex Colville painting "Moon and Cow" that we see in the stairwell.

Colville's "Horse and Train"

590 LS view of beast.(2:09:44)

We see a room numbered 05.

Past this room we see a door open on a room in which someone, perhaps a man, in a peculiar costume, is bent over a man in a tux on a bed. Their positioning is such that one the impression is intended to be given that the one in costume is performing fellatio on the other.

Becoming aware of Wendy's presence, they sit up and look at her.

Figure 23 - Longshot of the beast and man.

The costume has a drop seat and is perhaps that of a bear or a boar with snaggly, overextended, upper and lower teeth and eerie glowing eyes. What makes the image so terrifying is the nature of the costume which really resembles no creature at all, and its curly plush hide seeming to stand at odds with its plastic face when revealed. There is no way an act of fellatio could be performed by this costumed "beast" with its large fangs. The creature's mouth is shaped in such a way that it is a combination of two expressions, both a smile and a frown. There are no eyeholes for a person inside to look though. Instead the mask has large eyes with large black pupils illuminated with bright white points, the kind of bright illumination on the pupils we've seen with episodes of shining. It's an image that really makes no sense and is as frightening as it is due the shining eyes and the mouth being dual, having both a smile and a grimace.

Which is a reason why I think the creature is so disturbing. Our brains are taking in the seeming sexual context and the costume and the teeth and we don't dig immediately down to what is rawly registering in the unconscious whose business it is to measure and comprehend facial expressions without our conscious input. It sees the face is actually split into a smile and frown, showing both in an incomprehensible way as the shape of the mouth is thus not an oval but an X. It takes a longer time for the conscious mind to catch up and really figure out what is wrong with the face beyond the teeth and the peculiar eyes. Indeed, one feels less a sense of threat than of mocking.

Figure 24 - The beast.

There may be a connection with Danny's vision of the two girls in the Boulder bathroom, when one had a slight grin and the other had a slight frown.

The costume could possibly link back to the large bear pillow on which Danny was resting following his shining in Boulder, when being interviewed by the red-haired doctor. As I've noted elsewhere, the drop seat possibly corresponds with a crossfade image of room 237 to Wendy in the boiler room, in which her rear is briefly obscured by a dark square, and another correspondence had with the similitude (if decorative) of a red handprint on the back of the woman's dress during the party scene in the Gold Room, the individual who had caused the domino effect of Grady bumping into Jack.

This vision seems to be a complement to Jack's vision of the woman in room 237. In Stephen King's book, Danny encounters a man in a dog costume on all fours, and though it's a man his eyes are tiny and red. From the end protruded what rather sounds like a poodle's tail. The man's mouth and chin were covered in blood and he confronted Danny threateningly, saying he wouldn't let Danny by, "Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin", and that he would eat him up, beginning with his cock. Danny flees, and he continues to hear the drunken dogman yelling at Harry Derwent to get it up, and that he'll huff and puff until Harry Derwent's all blown down. Harry Derwent was a millionaire (somewhat like a Howard Hughes figure) who purchased the Overlook in 1936 and though he made everything else he touched turn into gold, not so with the Overlook. The dogman was a sometimes lover.

In the book, Jack had a vision of the dogman during a costume ball in which he also confronts Grady, tells him he recognizes him, but Grady says Jack has always been the caretaker.

Back when Wendy was in the boiler room, as she heard distressing yells, she went into the laundry room. I wrote that I heard one of the yells as a dog.

That Danny, in the book, had a vision of the creature that threatened him sexually, saying he wouldn't let him by, "Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin", takes us back to Jack calling to Wendy and Danny, before he began to axe the bathroom door, "Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in. Not by the hair on your chinny-chin-chin? Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in!"

Again, the beast-dog has incorporated into its face the idea of opposites. One reason its mouth is so peculiar is because it is cut to have both a frown and a grin, exemplifying in one form the oppositions, such as with the two girls, when one had a slight grin and the other had a slight frown. Something which might seem friendly could turn into a terrifying thing. Whatever is the meaning of what Wendy has seen, it's difficult to say, as there are so many possible connections in cross-analysis. The most pertinent, to me, is the combining of opposites, and that what appears to be one thing can turn into something else.

There are many who posit that Danny has been sexually abused by either his mother or father. I lean instead to something in Jack's past pursuing him, which King seems to allude to in his book but then drops the subject. The fact is that many of Kubrick's films have a young individual who is in some way sexually abused by an older person, or we've the feeling it might have happened. In the book on which Barry Lyndon is based, it is made apparent that Barry, in his young teens, is abused by his cousin who is much older than him, which he mistakes for love and this screws him up, and how he relates to women, for the rest of his life. Lolita is abused by Humbert. In Killer's Kiss we are given the uncomfortable feeling a woman, who has committed suicide, might have been abused by her father, whether emotionally or physically we don't know. The Shining has incorporated the film Summer of 42 in which a teen boy is abused by an older woman, which screws him up. Jack's encounter is then with a young woman who turns into an old one, and pursues him as death.

591 MS Wendy.(2:09:56)

Horrified, Wendy backs up down the hallway and flees in the opposite direction to the left. The camera focuses long enough on a door number at the end of the hall that we're able to see it could be either 107 or 101.

Figure 24 - Wendy flees past 107 or 101.

If we compare this level with the others we see that the area where a room corresponding to suite 3 would be has disappeared.

On the level below the one where Wendy sees the frightening vision, where suite 3 would be, is just beyond the double door at the hall's end.

On the level where Wendy sees the frightening vision, again where a corresponding suite 3 would be is beyond the end wall.

JACK PURSUES DANNY INTO THE MAZE, THE ENTRANCE OF WHICH HAS SHIFTED

592 LS Jack.(2:10:04)

Cut to Jack exiting the hall with the red diamond wall hanging, the same style as was observed through the door when Jack entered the men's room area with Grady. (View image.) It's the same hall Wendy had used when exiting to look at the Snowcat. Coming down this hall with the rug observed in the background, Jack passes on (our) left one of the red elevators. He turns through the door on the right into foyer.

The lodge had only unfolded to the point of our being aware of this area in the 8 am section when it was used by Wendy to go check the Snowcat.

Figure 25 - Jack comes from the same hall as had Wendy earlier.

We see on the left wall in the foyer area a print that was also in the secretarial area, which was only viewed when Bill had entered Ullman's office. It is Norval Morrisseau's "Flock of Loons".

593 LS exterior, Snowcat.(2:10:17)

Looking out the open door, Jack sees Durkin's Snowcat in which Dick arrived.

Figure 26 - Jack sees the Snowcat but not Danny.

The camera pans to the right and we realize that the entrance of the maze has shifted so it is now facing north, the hotel, rather than west. I write about this shift at length in the A Month Later section.

594 MS Jack, interior.(2:10:28)

Jack cuts on the lights, brightly illumining the maze.

Figure 27 - Jack illumines the maze.

Both of the doors are now open fairly wide. Wendy had trouble forcing one door open a little against the snow, and Dick had been able to open that door only about an inch wider. Danny would have passed through them when he returned to the lodge after having escaped outside, and then when he ran back outside. But it isn't possible that he would be able to force these doors open wide when neither Wendy nor Dick could do so.Also, all he would have needed to do was slip through. Instead, it's as though the lodge has opened them for Jack.

595 MS Danny, exterior(2:10:39)

Cut to Danny peeking out from behind the Snowcat.

596 MS Jack, interior(2:10:43)

JACK: Danny!

597 MS Danny, exterior(2:10:48)

Danny steps several feet out from the Snowcat.

598 MS Jack, exterior(2:10:53)

Jack limps into the snow.

JACK: Danny!

599 MS Danny, exterior(2:10:55)

Danny flees to screen right, his eyes on Jack.

600 MS Jack from behind, lodge beyond(2:10:56)

JACK: Danny!

Jack pursues him. We view the lodge beyond him and the Snowcat.

Figure 29 - Jack pursues Danny.

601 LS Danny, exterior maze.(2:11:01)

Cut to Danny climbing a hill to the entrance of the maze and disappearing within it.

Figure 30 - Danny enters the maze.

602 MS Jack.(2:11:05) Jack limps his way toward the maze, the Snowcat and the main entrance to the hotel in the background.

Figure 31 - Jack having passed the Snowcat, Danny having entered the maze, now clutches his right hand shut at his jacket.

I discuss in The Clenched Fist of Jack Torrance how from now on he will pursue Danny with his right hand clenched shut, appearing to hold shut his jacket, only carrying the axe in his left hand. Before now, both hands had been on the axe. As soon as Danny entered the maze this changed.

603 LS Danny in maze(2:11:08)

Cut to Danny running through the maze, the camera following behind. His first turn, after a number of feet, is a left, then an immediate right. He runs a number of feet and takes a left, cutting immediately back around with another left in a hairpin turn. He falls.

Figure 32 - Danny falls.

Figure 33 - Danny presses himself back up.

After running a few feet he next takes a right and then an immediate left and another immediate left, then a right.

604 MCU Jack in maze(2:11:33)

Jack in the maze now we view him from the front as he follows Danny's footsteps.

JACK: Danny! I'm coming! I'm coming, Dan!

605 MCU footsteps in snow(2:11:50)

We view the footsteps Danny has left in the snow.

606 MCU Danny's feet.(2:11:57)

Cut to Danny's feet as he races through the snow. He takes a right and runs down a long lane of the maze, snow flying into the camera.

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GREAT PARTY, ISN'T IT

607 LS Wendy in 7-Up hall.(2:12:03)

Cut to Wendy coming down the 7-Up hall.

WENDY: Danny!

Turning to look up the stairs. She stumbles on carafes and other items Jack had earlier knocked on the floor and picks her way through them. After Jack had knocked over the carafes he had exited the hall to come upon balloons in the lobby, evidence of the party going on in the Gold Room.

Exiting the hall, Wendy makes a hairpin turn into the hall parallel it, the one that runs behind Ullman's office.

Figure 34 - Wendy runs down the dark hall.

She reaches the intersecting elevator hallway and looking down it sees Dick lying in the lobby.

608 MCU Wendy.(2:12:28)

Reaction shot of Wendy. The driftwood centerpiece has disappeared.

Figure 35 - The driftwood has disappeared.

609 LS Dick's body.(2:12:30)

Cut to Dick's body, the camera then doing a quick zoom.

Figure 36 - The ashcan is back in place.

We can now observe the ashcan is back in place. We observed it in place in Figure 13 when Jack is looking over the lobby, preparing to hide. Then in Figure 16 we see the ash can is to the right side of the pillar rather than behind it as Dick approaches it. It has moved 90 degrees. In Figure 17, Jack leaps out from behind this pillar, he only having been able to hide behind it because of the ash can having been moved. He doesn't replace it after killing Dick, but here it has been returned to its proper place, a 90 degree shift around the pillar. We should have something that has disappeared, as these 90 degree turns accompany disappearing things. The driftwood?

610 MCU Wendy.(2:12:35)

Return to Wendy. Bewildered, she looks about, takes a couple of steps further down the hall. She then screams and turns to face the direction from which she came, the camera quickly panning to show a man in a tux standing at the end of the hall, blood running from a deep gash in the center of his head. The chandeliers are lit at this end when they hadn't been just a couple of seconds before.

Figure 37 - Wendy sees the party man.

611 MCU Wendy.(2:12:46)

Reaction shot of Wendy, terrified, showing the red panels behind her.

612 MCU Party man.(2:12:47)

Cut to the man and we see that the drink he holds is red with blood.

PARTY MAN (raising his glass): Great party, isn't it?

This refers to Wendy, in the Gold Ball Room on Closing Day talking about what a party they could have there, and Ullman saying they won't do too well unless they brought their own supplies.

I'm of the belief this man could be the one who came around the corner on Interview Day when Jack stepped on the spot where he would later murder Dick and we heard the first "sha" sound.

Figure 38 - Great party, isn't it.

613 MCU Wendy.(2:12:51)

Wendy backs up then runs toward the red doors which resemble the red elevators, only they are not doors. It is only now in the movie that these doors, which have the appearance of the elevators, have ever been used, so it's only now we learn that the brown panel in the middle is a door between red decorative panels. I also think of them as doorposts of a sort (refer to my earlier relation of this to the Passover, when Jack's hand is slashed by Wendy).

Figure 39 - Wendy flees toward the service hall.

The man's head is gashed right down the middle. If one considers the construct of a labrys, a double axe, what you have is possibly a representation of the brain and its two hemispheres--this having all to do with dualities, and I think of the interview and the "second thoughts" mentioned that individuals would have upon learning of the axe-wielding Grady.

The word "party" comes from partire, meaning to divide. I have held that because the opening trip up the Going-to-the Sun road crossfaded east of the Continental Divide (the VW traveling east to west), and because on Closing Day it crossfaded out to the lodge west of the Continental Divide (the VW traveling west to east), that Kubrick was showing the Overlook positioned psychically on the Continental Divide, as in a place of a meeting of opposites.
What is the Continental Divide also called? The Great Divide.

Our partier with the head split down the middle confirms my suspicion, but is also describing the Overlook as a labyrinth and the world maze and its relationship to the Great Divide. As I've stated I believe this is the man who came out of this area and passed the elevators, as Jack, the day of the interview, walked over where Dick would be killed and we heard the "sha" utterance. He was seen after that, a second time, standing before the maze and looking over it when Jack called Wendy to let her know he'd gotten the job. He was standing at the opposite end of the table from where Jack would later stand when looking at the maze, when it had turned 90 degrees and we had viewed it as the world maze from a point of view across the table from him.

I wrote in the A Month Later section...

Though we have seen the opening to the outdoor maze being in the west (or east) and that its heart runs parallel the hotel, as soon as the world maze appears this has changed, and we see this change reflected in the shadows shown as Wendy and Danny walk the heart of the physical maze. The shadows coming from the W/NW, the heart of the maze now runs perpendicular to the hotel. The 90 degree shift of the maze has already occurred. The shadows in the world maze can be assumed to be coming from the W/NW as well which means the camera is viewing the maze from opposite Jack, who stands in the west. The camera is viewing the maze from the position of the elderly man who had been looking at the maze on the day of Jack's interview. The same man who had appeared from around the corner when Jack stepped on the spot where he will later murder Dick.

So, the question is, who is this man? For if this is that man who was looking at the maze, he seems to represent Jack's dilemma as being split down the center. The man also ends up taking the position of the camera in opposition to Jack.

I think back to the party. Might he be at the party? How about after Jack crosses from the hall into the Gold Room, where we have a black divide in the shot as the camera passes behind the wall between the hall and the Gold Room, and the maitre'd (master of the house) greets Jack by name. Perhaps?

As it turns out, I had already intuitively associated the hall, in this scene, with the scene of the slain girls lying side by side, in identical positions, but one face down and the other face up.

From the Wednesday Part 2 section...

Now, the disappearing bread crumb. This is just kind of fun to point out. See the little white dot on the screen above just left of center?
As Jack advances it briefly and noticably brightens. It fades. It disappears as Jack turns to go into the Gold Room.

The crumb brightens (in the blu-ray as well).

The white flecks on the carpet and in the blood of the two girls have always caught my attention.
What happens if we merge the white dot in the gold hallway with the two girls? Two things. The white "bread crumb" from the gold hall is the size of the white flecks scattered about the girls (it is the fleck closest in the foreground). Another thing, Jack's shape merges pretty much perfectly with a bloody stain on the foremost girl's dress.
It occurred to me the axe seemed positioned so that Jack could rather follow it into the Gold Room. So, let's keep this superimposition going for another couple of images.

This is my superimposition, not in the movie. The peculiar "crumb"is of the same size as the white flecks sprinkled about the murder scene.

It occurred to me the axe seemed positioned so that Jack could rather follow it into the Gold Room.

This is my superimposition, not in the movie, of Jack following the axe handle into the Gold Room.

In my superimposition, Jack follows the axe into the Gold Room, party in full swing, where he is greeted by the maitre'd holding the bright red menu.

The man playing the party guest is Norman Gay. The maitre d' is not named. Norman Gay also appeared in bit parts in two other Kubrick films. He was in A Clockwork Orange as a BBC producer, and in Barry Lyndon as a tailor who is keen to sell Barry a garment of the finest velvet that is stitched with silver thread. When I look back to Barry Lyndon I find that I have already associated him with Kubrick's use of two colors of red and how he uses them to represent blood.

Whatever happened to that beautiful red velvet garment that Barry was being shown in shot 530. I don't believe Barry ever wears a suit of that color in the film, but now we have Bryan appear in a suit of that very same color. And it struck me when I saw that bright red of the sofa backing the burgundy red of the suit, as Bullingdon enters the music room with Bryan in shot 606, that we had seen this combination before, with the garment Barry was being shown in shot 530. So I've combined them both below so it can be observed how it seems the burgundy garment Barry is shown in 530 has a bright red interior lining that is the same red as the sofa behind Bullingdon and Byron in shot 606.

Why should we perhaps pay attention to this? Because we have seen the same in A Clockwork Orange. Alex examines his wine, suspicious of it, and we see it from two sides. From one side it is burgundy red, and from the other it is more a kool-aid red. Sitting between Alexander and the strong man, Alex decides to go ahead and drink it. He ends up passing out cold on the table, his face in spaghetti, then waking to Beethoven playing over and over again, driving him to leap out the window in a bid for suicide.

The two shades of red have been compared earlier in the film to how the red on screen, in film, always seems more real. Vino on tap. And the film opens with two distinctly different shades of red.

That is as far as I will take this association for now.

Killer's Kiss, which was a Minotaur Production, features in it an fight between Davey, a boxer, and a dance hall boss who has kidnapped Davey's girlfriend who was working at the dance hall until the boss raped her. The dance hall boss wields the axe, and loses. In the analysis for that film I discuss how a labyrs appears to depicted in it as well.

In some versions of the myth of the birth of Athena, Prometheus (or Hephaestus or Hermes) cleaved Zeus' head with the labrys in order for Athena to be released from him. How did this come to be? Zeus had swallowed Metis, the goddess of crafty thought, as it had been foretold she would bear a child by him more powerful than himself. Within Zeus, Metis began crafting a helmet for Athena, and the pain of the hammering was such that Zeus caused his head to be split in order to ease it. So did Athena spring from his cleaved head fully grown, a patron of both wisdom and battle who made use of strategy rather than brute passion.

It's sensible that the dual blades of the labrys used to cleave Zeus' head might represent dual natures via the two hemispheres of the brain, just as people still tend to think of the brain as having left and right natures. And it makes sense to me that the man with the cloven head would appear as Danny leads Jack into the maze.

For really, it's not that Jack has chased Danny into the maze. Instead, Danny has very sensibly and calculatedly led Jack into the maze, running into it knowing that Jack will follow and that he will be able to lose him there.

614 LS Danny in the maze.(2:12:56)

In the maze we see Danny running, the chanting continuing over. After going down a long lane he takes a left, then a right, we hearing Jack call, "Danny!" He passes down another lane and takes a right followed by an immediate right then an immediate left. We see a bench and realize he's reached the maze's center.

Figure 42 - Danny in the heart of the maze.

615 MCU Jack. (2:13:11)

Cut to Jack seen from the front, yelling.

JACK: Danny, I'm coming! You can't get away! I'm right behind ya!

DICK DISAPPEARS AMIDST SKELETONS AND COBWEBS

616 LS Wendy Gold Room hall off lobby (2:13:33)

Wendy now is shown running down the hall outside the lobby that supposedly leads to the Gold Room Hall. As with when Dick passed down the hall earlier, this time we're allowed to see to the point where the July 4th photo will be on the right wall. The photos that we can see appear to be the same as when Dick passed down, but the place of the photo where Jack will later be seen is this time obscured by shadow.

The mirror that has always been on the far end of the corridor is no longer there. It was hanging on the wall when Dick earlier entered (see Figure 15).

Figure 43 - Wendy enters the Gold Room hall off the lobby.

The hall is cast in greenish-blue light. The camera turns with Wendy as she reaches the lobby doors to see all the lights off and it cast in a deep blue light, spiderwebs covering everything. Dick no longer lies on the floor. Though the drapes were earlier closed, light from the outside maze pours in. Skeletal forms are seated and standing about. Wendy screams.

Figure 44 - Dick has disappeared.

617 MCU Wendy. (2:13:29)

A reaction shot of Wendy's terror.

618 MS skeletons. (2:13:32)

Cut to a group of skeletons seated where Jack had lunch on Closing Day. They wear tuxes, white tie, and long dresses that are of a generation before the flapper party we'd seen earlier. A champagne bottle and glasses rest on a table.

619 MS skeletons by phone booths. (2:13:34)

Cut to the seating area before the phone booths with their modern phones. We see skeletal men in the booths. A skeletal man and two women are seated before the booths. On the table before them are two bottles of champagne and more glasses. Cobwebs are everywhere and the table is thick with dust.

620 MS skeleton and waiter. (2:13:37)

A group of 6 skeletons, including a balding waiter with hair on the sides of his head. Could this be Delbert Grady? But the hair appears longer than his. He looks a little like Bozo the clown. As with the other skeletons, they all seem to be facing Wendy, looking at her. Again, they are in white tie tuxes and dresses that appear to be from an era earlier than the flapper garb.

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DANNY, IN THE HEART OF THE MAZE, COVERS HIS TRACKS

621 LS Jack from behind. (2:13:40)

In the maze, Jack continues to follow Danny's tracks but already he is appearing to become confused. He takes a left for a couple of steps then backtracks and continues on.

622 MS Danny. (2:13:50)

Having reached the heart of the maze, we now see Danny carefully backtracking in his footsteps...one, two steps.

624 MS Danny. (2:14:16) Danny continues retracing his steps, carefully placing his feet in the footprints he'd made in the snow. One more step as we hear Jack yell.

JACK: Danny!

Danny leaps to the side and begins covering any trace of that leap and where he has just stood.

Figure 46 - Danny covers his tracks.

I have discussed several times already how what Danny does is a pattern that appears in the movie, and is based upon Danny's methodology for hiding himself here. We have had numerous instances of an opposition/reversal accompanied by a 90 degree turn and the disappearance of something. This is Danny retracing his steps (opposition) then taking a 90 degree turn into the hedge and covering his tracks.

Thus does Danny disappear from Jack. It is the penultimate disappearing act in the film.

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THE RED HALL AND THE BLOODY ELEVATOR

625 LS Wendy in the red hall. (2:14:25)

Cut to Wendy running down a shocking red hallway with its green tables and stacked chairs. Danny having himself knowingly ennacted the opposition/reversal accompanied by the 90 degree turn and thus disappearing, covering his tracks, Wendy finally will come upon the revelation of the bloody elevator.

Figure 47 - Wendy in the red hall.

Astonished, confused, disbelieving, she looks screen left (her right) into the hall of Danny's bloody elevator vision. We note on the left wall a photo of trees that is the same photo that had been hanging on the right wall of another hall as she fled the bloodied "party" man, but it is not that hall.

The green hall behind Stuart Ullman's office appears to have no direct relationship to the red hall, the appearance of both is distinctly different, but a kind of sympathetic relationship is had.

Figure 49 - Closing Day, on the way to the basement.

Below we see Wendy at a point in the red hall near where she is with the group in Figure 49. We see behind her, on screen left, the two alcoves in the wall in which are the vending machines in Figure 49. We see the vent on screen right in the ceiling. We see the lobby beyond.

Figure 49a - Before seeing the bloody elevator.

The red hall is the set of the green hall that has been reworked. As I've read that Kubrick's plan was to film according to the timeline of the script rather than out of order, this may have been shot toward the end, but I have also read of scenes filmed out of sequence.

And that single appearance of the red hall is shocking, because Kubrick has trained us to view the back service halls of the hotel in greens, but then suddenly, at film's end, the hotel immersed in the icy blues of a blizzard, we're granted a view of this red hall that is made doubly alarming in that it is painted red in glossy, highly reflective paint.

The green tables and stacked chairs that line the walls suggest the red hall is in proximity of the Gold Room.

Figure 49b - Closing Day, Stuart's office.

Figure 49c - Saturday, before Danny happens on the girls in the flowered hall.

Figure 49d - Before the bloody elevator

Continuing down the green hall, we see on the left the rear door to Stuart's office, while on the right is a double door exit.

Our first acquaintance with the green hall is with Jack and Wendy leaving Danny in the kitchen with Dick, Stuart taking them to see the basement. The atmosphere is light-hearted, Wendy eventually comparing the hotel to a ghost ship.

Our second viewing of the green hall is with Danny on his big wheel, just before he runs into the twins in the bloody flowered hallway. The shot of Danny cycling down the green service hall begins just after the thickened sections of wall that separate the rear of Stuart's office from the hall which its impossible window should overlook. That hall outside the impossible window is one we know exists from observation in the lobby, but Kubrick won't show it to us until the scene in which Jack limps toward the lobby stairs, readying himself for his attack on Dick. We do, however, see access doors from that hall to the green service hall on Closing Day (figure 49h).

Having mentioned where the camera begins its pursuit of Danny down the green service hall, before his encountering the twins, when Wendy is fleeing down the red hall she stops in the same location, just before the thickened walls. The thickened walls aren't there in this red version of the hall. Instead there is an unexpected door (figure 49g).

Figure 49e - Closing Day.

Figure 4f - Danny hides.

Figure 49g - Wendy approaching the door.

Figure 49h - Approaching the 7 Up hall on Closing Day.

We can see above how the hall in which Wendy views the bloodied man who announced it's a "great party" exits onto this green hall directly behind Ullman's office, but in the red version of the service hall Wendy instead turns short of it into the hall with the bloody elevator.

Perhaps what may be overlooked, as Wendy approaches that hall, long before she can see down it to the elevator, the blood as yet unleashed, is the fact her expression is one of utter astonishment, as if she is surprised by this hall. Running down the red hall, it's as she passes what would be, in the green hall, Stuart's office door, that Wendy slows, well in advance of being able to see down the hall to the elevator. From her viewpoint, she can't possibly see what is in that adjoining hall, and yet she is dumbfound by it, and as her astonishment and anxiety have nothing to do with an as yet unseen bloody elevator, it must be this hall, its very existence, that amazes her. I think for most audience members, as we soon see the bloody elevator, Wendy's surprise at the hall is compressed instead into her horror at the blood flowing subsequently from the elevators, and they forget that Wendy, advancing toward the hall, had no idea what she would see. She only knew something was different.

Figure 49i - Closing Day detail.

Figure 49j - 4 p.m. hall detail.

Looking at figures 49i and 49j we see that, however different the two halls seem to be, another green hall remnant and identifier is the plaque on Stuart's office door appearing to be the same as the plaque on the door in the red hall, and I'd be curious what that plaque in the red hall reads. So much has been altered, and yet there remains perhaps the same plaque? Why should that be if not to provide a linkage.

My thought is that Wendy is as surprised as she is because this adjoining hall is out of place, it's not supposed to be there, as if she recognizes the red hall should be the green hall and knows there is a now another hall here in the place of the thickened walls.
But as Kubrick maintains ambiguity through the film on the nature of what is happening at the Overlook, whether its nature is purely psychological or has a supernatural element, and because Kubrick also has painstakingly unfolded the hotel for us so slowly, meting the halls and rooms out sometimes in mere inches, it's sensible to say that the red hall could be just another area of the hotel we've not yet viewed, especially considering that it's populated with the Gold Room chairs and tables. Nor does Wendy look alarmed by this red hall proper. We take her, at this point, as fleeing from other horrors she's witnessed, pellmell wandering like a ball in a pinball machine bounced around by frightening situations, looking for a way out as much as she is for Danny. She was obviously terrified by the transformation of the lobby with its blue party skeletons, so why not of the red hall itself if it is indeed the green hall?

What's more important is the audience's reaction. In fact, I think Kubrick understood if we had Wendy reacting in horror to the red hall, leaping in surprise at it, looking all about her as if, "Where did the green hall go?" the audience's horror would be diffused by Wendy's. Vivian Kubrick shot 28 hours of footage for her documentary on the film but only a brief 25 minutes was kept. In that 25 minutes was footage of Kubrick coaching Shelley Duvall not to leap in response to every aggressive or threatening aspect of Jack's performance, that after a while it began to look fake. The same could be said of the hotel. If she expressed overt alarm over every sinister or changing aspect of the hotel, there would have been no room for the audience to feel their own horror and react to their own sense of astonishment, they would have been instead examining Wendy and responding to her. And the audience is surprised, alarmed, horrified by this red hall, its walls saturated with the supernatural, the hotel--and not just its ghosts--seeming to come to life, threatening to swallow Wendy whole.

In the meanwhile, Danny, out in the maze, has just prior this scene successfully concealed himself by covering his footprints, and here Wendy is very near where would be the cupboard in the green hall in which Danny had been hiding when he shined the murder of Dick and we saw his expression of horror as he shined it in his Denver bathroom on the day of Jack's interview. Do I imagine there is a relationship between Danny screaming in the cupboard, his face showing the same horror as it had in The Interview section when he saw the bloody elevator, and that here, in not exactly what would be the same location in the green hall, but near it, Wendy is about to see the vision of the same bloody elevator? Yes, I do. It's as if, in the same psychic location of it, his mother enters the territory of that scream and now will see the same bloody elevator that has threatened Danny from the film's beginning.

Figure 49k - Day of the Interview.

The sections of white ceiling in the red hall have always been curious to me, seeming to stand out in the kind of idiosyncratic way that demands examination of correspondences. To my eye they echo the square fluorescent lights in Stuart's office. But there's more to it than that. I've long questioned those high shelves in Stuart's office which serve only as holders for plants despite the difficulty that would be had in watering those plants. If we compare those high shelves with the green and red halls, we see that they recall the dropped sections of ceiling in those halls that run parallel the walls. Further, the way the light of the impossible window plays on the ceiling, there is more than a passing resemblance with the fluorescent lights in the green service hall. It seems to me that the white boxes in the red hall's ceiling are intended to bring to mind the office where we first saw the impossible window via a similarity to the boxed fluorescent lights.

We know the preposterous window in the office shouldn't be there, that beyond the office is the hall in which Wendy sees the "great party" man. In that "great party" hall is a connection with the hall down which she views the bloody elevator, though they are two separate halls. That connection is in the form of a landscape photo.

Figure 49l - Wendy flees the party man.

Figure 49m - The photo of the trees.

Figure 49n - The photo of the trees.

Figure 49l shows Wendy in the hall behind the office after her discovering Dick's body, and that terror compounded by the apparition of the "great party" man. As she flees that apparition, we see behind her the doors that go to the green hall. On the right we there is a landscape photo of trees, similar to those around the lodge, standing against what may be either an early morning or late evening sky.

In figures 49m and 49n we see this same landscape photo in the bloody elevator hall.

One of the first stand-out intimations we have that something is wrong with the Overlook, that all is not as it seems, is the impossible window in Stuart's office, viewed near the beginning of the film. Here, toward the end, Kubrick returns us to that same impossible window, positioning us to look directly behind it, even between it and the formerly observed "great party" hall, where slips in the shined hall that leads to the bloody elevators. Whatever is the significance of this picture of the trees, I'm not confident, but a reason it stands out is not only for its doubling, being both in the "great party" hall and the bloody elevator hall, but also for reason of its being, aside from the painting of the landscape above the bed in suite 3, and the four seasons photos of the Overlook and its environment just outside the office door in the reception area, the only other image in the Overlook that appears to portray the surrounding landscape. My inclination has been to associate the landscape photo with the impossible window in Stuart's office, reminding us of its impossible view.

My gut emotional feeling as regards the red hall is that this pictorial landscape, because it appears in the same position in both in this and the "great party" hall, intends to suggest that the red hall is--regardless whether it is in fact the green hall or not--one of the maze's variations of the green service hall behind the offices, at the very least the skeleton of a pattern repeating but adorned variously. The tables and chairs from the Gold Room give the impression of a stage now disassembled, yet their presence is also curiously consistent with Wendy's frantic wanderings of the service quarters where the halls were also lined with a clutter of old tables and chairs. These tables and chairs now seem to proliferate and have overtaken the Overlook, when before we were more aware of seeing shiny repetitive carts and cupboards holding dining china and coffee urns which alluded to the kitchen being possibly just beyond any one or even all of the doors in the service halls.

626 MS Red elevators. (2:14:40)

The blood pours forth, filling the hall, as if the blood of how many Passovers, the Passover being an observance to be repeated in perpetuity, forever.

627 MCU Wendy. (2:14:48)

Cut to Wendy gazing on in horror.

628 MS Bloody elevators (2:14:51)

The blood continues to fill the hall.

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THE REVERSED ELEVATOR DOORS

The elevator doors are actually reversed in Danny's vision and Wendy's. This is not something that is at all immediately obvious.

This is how the elevator doors appear when Wendy first sees them.

The elevator doors

Now a close-up look at them. We see the screen left/right side of the door is dominant over the screen right/left side one, as far as overlapping in front of it. This is the proper orientation and is what we see in the Colorado Lounge.

The elevator doors

This is how they appear to Wendy as the blood flows from them. The screen right/left side of the door is now dominant over the screen left/right side, as far as overlapping in front of it.

The elevator doors

Here's a still from when Danny was viewing the elevators.

The elevators

And this is how they would appear if the elevator doors were appropriately oriented.

The elevator doors are reversed

As you can see, Kubrick did not simply take the hall and reverse it while editing. Compare the wall hangings to when Wendy is viewing the elevators, before they are reversed and the blood flows out. The rug wall hangings with the unreversed elevators are in the same position on the "left" wall as they are in the vision when the elevators are reversed and the blood flows from them. Kubrick has once again tricked us so that we aren't seeing what we believe we are seeing.

This shift in dominance we have seen before with the twin girls, and I examine this in the Saturday section when Danny sees them in the bloodied flowered hall.

Below is Danny's vision of the girls in the Boulder apartment bathroom. The screen left/right side girl has her arm in the dominant position over the screen right/left side girl's arm.

The two girls as viewed in the mirror in the Boulder apartment bathroom.

When Danny sees the girls in the game room, we have the same thing. The girl on the screen left/right side has her arm in the dominant position over the girl on the screen right/left side.

In the images below, the girls briefly viewed as Danny looks at the number of room 237, the girl on the screen left/right side is again the dominant one, her arm crossed over the arm of the girl on the screen right/left side.

The two girls as viewed in the left door of Room 237.

Below, the girls as Danny sees them in the flowered hall. These shots have been staged so that they are almost exactly the same. Almost. Look at the folds of the dresses and how the ribbons drape, they are the same. The placement of the girls in the hall is the same, and even their skirts measure about the same distance from the walls. Their unlinked arms are almost but not quite exactly the same, positioned ever so slightly different, but the print of the wallpaper behind their figures and how it relates to their outlines is an exact match. Their hair, when Danny is in the flowered hall, is different. The girl on the left, previously, has hair that is slightly frizzy at the ends, while the other girl's hair is perfectly curled. The situation is now reversed, the girl on the screen left/right side has the hair that is perfectly curled at the ends, and the other girl's hair is not.

The two girls as they are in Danny's fourth vision, in the hall. The girl on the right now has the dominant arm.

It is only when Danny views the girls in the flowered hall, with the screen right/left side one in the dominant position, that Danny has his vision of the bloodied hall and their murder. Just as it is only when the screen right/left side of the elevator doors are in the dominant position, overlapping the screen left, that we see the flood of blood.

JACK IN THE HEART OF THE MAZE

629 MS Danny in the maze. (2:14:57)

Cut to Danny, in the maze, hidden to the side. The camera pans left and we see Jack, exhausted, enter the screen. He stumbles on, always gripping his jacket with that right hand. He will not release it.

Figure 50 - Jack enters the heart of the maze.

630 MS Danny's footprints (2:15:12)

Cut to a POV shot of Jack following Danny's footprints.

Figure 51 - Following Danny's footsteps.

If we look to the screen right of the third footstep from the bottom of figure 51 (shot 630), we may see an ALPh, or aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, that is derived from the West Semitic word for ox.

Two points with a line between by which there is both division and connection.

The footsteps suddenly disappear. No more breadcrumbs to follow. The POV shot moves up to the white light at the end of the path.

Figure 52 - The footsteps end.

Danny will be passed over by his father who follows Danny's tracks to where they suddenly stop, as if he has simply disappeared.

Thus again does the Overlook recall the Passover.

I have read that pesach (passover) is also as a combination of pe, "mouth", and such being something like "converse", this combination meaning that the right to self expression and rule over one's destiny is restored, the individual released from the cage of pre-ordained fate. And it does fit as what we have here has become at least in part an Oedipal coming of age story, the son vanquishing the father, though in the myth of Oedipus he is caught in the tyranny of his destiny. We will see that Jack's ability to converse reasonably has left him, he becoming little more than a beast.

631 CU Jack. (2:15:37)

Bewildered, enraged, Jack turns about.

JACK: Danny!

632 MCU Danny. (2:15:44)

Cut to Danny listening.

633 MCU Jack. (2:15:47)

Jack, smiling, seeming to have gotten an idea, goes to the right (screen left).

634 LS Jack.

He plunges on past the point of Danny's inexplicable disappearance into the frozen maze. He proceeds where there are no footsteps to follow.

635 MS Danny emerging. (2:16:00)

His father having passed, Danny emerges from behind a bank of snow.

636 LS Footprints through the maze. (2:16:09)

Danny's POV of his father's footprints in the snow.

637 MS Danny (2:16:11)

Assured his father is past, Danny emerges from behind the snowbank to run in the opposite direction. He will follow the footprints back out.

638 MS Footprints (2:16:18)

Just as Danny is about to turn right, cut to his POV of the tracks in the snow as he follows them. He turns right.

639 LS back of Jack (2:16:26)

Cut to Jack trudging deeper into the maze over fresh snow. He stops at an intersection and turns about, puzzling whether to go right or left. He continues forward.

640 MCU Jack. (2:16:35)

Cut to Jack from the front, stumbling on.

641 LS light. (2:16:40)
POV shot of Jack as he heads toward the light at the end of that untrodden path. Before reaching it, he turns right, into another light.

642 MS Danny. (2:16:44)

Cut to front of Danny as he runs through the maze. He takes a left.

643 LS Jack. (2:16:49)

Cut to a shot of Jack from the rear, stopping at another light, stepping right, looking back to the left. He decides to go left but seeing nothing he turns back and continues right, exhausted. Jack staggers on, becoming slower and slower, hampered by his limp and the cold. It doesn't occur to him to follow his tracks back out of the maze.

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WENDY AND DANNY, REUNITED, FLEE THE HOTEL

644 MS Wendy outside hotel. (2:17:03)

Cut to Wendy running toward the Snowcat.

645 MS Danny. (2:17:11)

Danny still running through the maze. He turns left, left again. He falls.

Figure 53 - Danny falls again.

646 MS Wendy. (2:17:18)

Danny has fallen at the entrance to the maze for we now see Wendy screaming as she sees him.

WENDY: Danny!

She throws down the knife and runs forward, the bathroom window of Suite 3 still illumined in the dark beyond the Snowcat.

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647 LS Danny outside the maze's entrance. (2:17:20) Danny lies at the entrance to the maze.

Figure 54 - Danny lying at the entrance to the maze.

Or has Danny fallen at the maze's entrance? I don't think so. Where he lies in figure 53 is very different from where he lies in figure 54. Just as we have often had three perspectives, and we've already seen (when examining the mazes) we had three versions of the labyrinth, we have a shift in perspective between when Danny falls and Wendy sees him so that the place where he falls isn't the same as viewed by Wendy from the exterior of the maze.

His mother calling to him, he rises and yells for her, running toward her.

DANNY: Mommy!

The camera pans to Wendy and Danny reaching each other and hugging. Wendy kisses his cheek.

648 MS Jack. (2:17:30)

Cut to Jack still stumbling through the maze. He attempts to yell, "Danny!", but his words are choked, becoming more and more unintelligible. He may yell, "Wait!"

649 LS Wendy and Danny. (2:17:36)

Wendy and Danny run over the snow to the Snowcat, Wendy falling once to her knees. She opens the passenger door and lifts Danny in.

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650 LS Jack from rear. (2:17:48)

Jack struggles through the maze. Finally he falls. We hear the Snowcat starting. Jack rises.

As if to point out how Jack is determined not to unclench that right fist, towards the end of this scene, Danny escaping with his mother in the Snowcat, Kubrick has Jack fall on his right side. He takes a full out tumble on his right side and he never removes his hand from his jacket, never unclenching his fist.

Figure 55 - Jack falls now.

When you fall, you are automatically going to reach out in order to try to brace yourself. The automatic, natural thing for Jack to have done, as he began to fall to his right, would have been to release his coat and reach out with his right hand and attempt to thwart the fall by grabbing the hedge, or brace himself with his hand as he fell into the snowbank. But Jack doesn't do that. The actor, Jack, doesn't do that, which means he has been instructed to keep that right hand always closed and holding his jacket. He had to fight the natural impulse to use that hand to protect himself from falling.

Even as Jack struggles to stand after the fall, he doesn't release his jacket. The natural thing to do would have been for him to use his right hand to help push himself back upright. But, no, the actor, Jack Nicholson, had to have been instructed to not unclench that fist, to keep a hold on the jacket.

Figure 56 - Jack struggles to stand.

Kubrick even showed us earlier the natural way for Jack to fall. It's how Danny fell in figures 32 and 33. Kubrick had Danny also fall on his right side, and he put out his right arm to catch himself and pushed himself up with his right arm.

651 LS Snowcat (2:18:08)

Cut to the Snowcat turning in front of the hotel, Jack yelling unintelligibly from inside the maze.

652 MS Jack (2:18:17)

Hearing the Snowcat drive away, Jack in the maze continues yelling incoherently, grotesquely, as if the bull-headed minotaur, human overwhelmed by animal nature.

653 LS Snowcat (2:18:24)

Having turned around, the Snowcat makes it way past the lodge.

654 MS Jack (2:18:30)

Jack yells inside the maze.

655 LS Snowcat (2:18:38)

The Snowcat drives past the pipes, up the hill and away, enveloped by cloud, the cloud removing it from us so it disappears. We hear Jack yelling in the maze.

Figure 57 - The Snowcat disappears.

656 MS Jack (2:18:50)

Jack stumbles along, cuts right then a hairpin right again as he yells. He cuts left.

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657 LS Jack from behind. (2:19:06)

We watch from behind as Jack stumbles along, much like the Creature from a Frankenstein film. He waves his axe. Finally, he sinks down onto a snowbank, leaning against the hedge.

He still clenches his jacket.

Figure 58 - Jack slumps against a hedge.

658 MCU Jack frozen. (2:19:24)

Daylight. Jack is seen from the front, frozen, engulfed in snow, his eyes rolled partly back in his head, his mouth partly open showing his bottom teeth. His expression is much the same as when he took his first drink of Jack Daniels in the Gold Ballroom. The wind howls.

Figure 58 - Frozen Jack.

This below shot of Jack from "The Overlook Hotel Tumblr" reveals what is going on with Jack's right hand. It rests atop the snow, clenched tight. His left hand is instead relaxed open upon the snow. The holding the jacket shut has been, in a way, an excuse for Jack keeping that right hand closed fast. The holding the jacket shut against the cold was not the important thing. It was not why Jack's hand was clenched shut. Had he continued to hold his axe with that right hand as well as with his left, we would not have noted eventually that something had changed, seemingly in connection with Danny having entered the maze. Seeing Jack here in the snow, frozen, no longer holding his jacket shut, but that right hand still clenched tight, seals that Jack's clenched fist hadn't anything to do with having to hold shut his jacket shut. It's just that as long as he was holding his jacket shut with that clenched fist our attention was not immediately drawn to that clenched fist as peculiar, we thought his fist clenched over the jacket, holding it shut, was in response to the cold. Not so.

Figure 59 - Frozen Jack with his right fist still clenched shut.

659 LS to CU through the lobby to the Gold Room hall. (2:19:33)

The camera moves through the lobby toward the Gold Room hall. The lights are off. The seating is all covered with sheets. It's as if we are at the beginning to Lolita, Humbert entering Quilty's mansion, and any moment one of the sheets will become animated and Quilty will rise, calling out, "I'm Spartacus. You come to free the slaves or something?" The Gold Room sign is on the right again, as it was in The Interview section.

Figure 60 - The ending recalls Humbert entering Quilty's mansion to murder him, Quilty appearing from beneath a sheet on a chair and asking if he's Spartacus come to free the slaves.

There are some very noticeable differences between how the lobby and hall are outfitted in this scene and in other scenes. One that I've discussed previously is how in the opening shot of Jack arriving for his interview we clearly see heating vents for forced air behind the radiant heaters.

The vents for the forced heat are visible behind the radiant heaters just above the baseboard. Click on the image for better view. I've lightened the shot so they can be a little better seen.

There are no forced air vents observed behind the radiant heaters in this section.

The radiant heaters in the closing section.

The camera continues closing in on the photos in the adjoining Gold Room hall. We notice there is no red sofa below these photos.

A kind of curious thing happens in respect to the "center" of the image.

Or, at least, it's curious to me. True center seems to be where we think it is, zeroing right in on Jack in the middle of the photograph that is about to be revealed. And it rather lines up with the center of the wall sconce right above. But it doesn't with the designs in the wainscotting below the photo, nor with the design of the carpet, nor with where we've a "center point" in the design of the lobby floor before the door. One will think I'm picking at details and I don't believe I am. Kubrick's symmetries are not absolutely perfect symmetries, they're not mirror images, nor should they be, but it has struck me that we have at least one other "center" here, which is the light of the sconce just screen right of center, and that we really kind of need to pay attention to the shadow sconce. The sconce that isn't there yet is by virtue of its shadow. The phantom sconce. Also note that Kubrick has it so that the shadow of the left sconce falls perfectly under the "center" one.

We really do need to pay attention to this idea of the "mirrored" sconce reorienting our idea of true center somewhat, for we are, after all, about to have revealed to us the hidden Jack.

I think you can see, with the very opening image of the film set above this closing image, how the island's alignment with the mountain has a certain relationship with the wall sconce and its shadow. And even as we zoom in on the photo that shows Jack we will have yet more hidden information divulged, will we not? It's like something keeps opening up and revealing more to us of what has been hidden.

Figure 61 - The photos. The red diamond rug now to their side and turned 90 degrees from the way we have always seen it.

There is a red and black diamond rug now, instead of a mirror, to the left of the photos, all of which seem, every one of them, to be different from any we've observed earlier on this wall. The rug is the same as was seen in the entry to the red bathroom off the Gold Room and in a hall off the only entry/exit we ever see anyone physically use, but this rug is at a 90 degree angle from those rugs.

We have now revealed to us a photo with Jack in a tux, at the head of a party of people perhaps in the old ballroom.

Figure 62 - Closer in on the photos, we see people at a table in the lower left corner looking up to the middle photo.

Figure 63 - Moving closer in on the photo.

Jack is waving at the camera, at us, a piece of paper tucked in the palm of his hand. A caption on the photo reads July 4th Ball, 1921.

Crossfade to a close-up of the photo clearly showing Jack's face, if there was any question about it. The camera pans down to show Overlook Hotel, July 4th Ball, 1921.

Why was Jack so adamantly holding his fist clenched to his chest? Because he was holding something in that hand, represented by the paper he has now tucked against his palm, held there by his thumb, displayed for the camera to see.

Figure 66 - Detail.

Figure 67 - Detail.

Figure 68 - Detail.

Fade out and begin credits at 2:21:20.

"...surrender all my life to you..." can be heard on the soundtrack.

We wonder how does the man in the photo have Jack's face? Is the current caretaker Jack a sort of double of this person, reborn in some way, pulled back to the Overlook? Has he been pulled into the photo through actions that have taken place in the film, perhaps replacing someone else? Just as the 1970s Charles Grady became the ethereal 1920s Delbert Grady has he assumed a new name and identity through the lodge? What is the piece of paper he holds which makes us feel if we could reach out and take it we might know the answer, it may have a message? Why does the man behind him stand with his hand on Jack's upraised arm? Who is the woman with half closed eyes, in the laurel leaf crown, the heart-shaped pin on her breast, a bow decorating, a feather extending from it?